Not having a ceremony to honor significant points in life's journey can
leave a person emotionally confused, Marianne says. "If a culture or a family
does not consciously and honorably mark the transition into the teenage years,
the teenager will subconsciously feel the need to mark it anyway. That will
often be in a dysfunctional way—body piercing, immoderate sex, drugs."

The passage into midlife works in the same way. Without consciously honoring a change, Marianne says, we'll mark it subconsciously...with a midlife crisis. Marianne says men tend to display midlife crises by acting wild, while women are more prone to unacknowledged depression.

Yet if you have a ceremony to mark the passage, Marianne says you will literally change how your mind thinks.